It' A Wonderful Life?
by binkeybella
Summary: Tony struggles with the real reason he insists on watching his favorite film every Christmas.


A drabble I've been wanting to write, and also letting folks know I'm still writing. My desk top computer is on the fritz, so I'm using an old laptop and not having a lot of luck saving my docs. I wrote over half of a new chapter for Cabin Fever and lost it, twice, so for now, some short things I can finish in one go and post. Not beta'd.

NCIS

He wasn't sure why he did it anymore – he knew the thing backwards and forwards, could recite practically every line of it, and still...still he watched it, no matter what, on or after Christmas Day, with or without company. The past few years his team had indulged him and joined him in the annual viewing; even Gibbs had grudgingly sat his butt down and watched, or pretended to watch at least part of it.

It was more habit now than tradition, as he wasn't even sure what tradition he was upholding – remembering his mother at the holidays, or making a big deal that he had a tradition to begin with. Wasn't that what the holidays were about, what families were about? It didn't matter what the ritual was, it was the comfort in the repetitive event, wasn't it? To be able to say you _had _traditions?

He didn't really know – he'd come from a background so skewed and broken that he couldn't ever remember the word even being mentioned, except for the times his parents would scream at each other for getting tanked on Christmas Eve. Now _there _was a tradition. Adults trying to poke each other's eyes out with relish forks as they shouted slurred obscenities at each other, then passed out on the parlor sofa, or floor, whichever they got to first.

What puzzled him the most anymore was that no one had ever really asked him why it was his favorite Christmas movie. Didn't anyone want to know, or was it just easier to sit through the damned thing with him and be done with it to shut him up? The horrible thing was, even if anyone did ask, he wasn't sure what he would tell them; he certainly couldn't tell them the truth, so it was just as well that no one had asked him and waited for a real answer. It had taken him years to even ask himself the burning question, and when he searched around for the answer one drunken New Year's Eve, he'd been so shocked and mortified at what had been staring him in the face for so long, he almost couldn't breathe.

He'd been tempted to drink himself into a liquor-poisoning coma, and then thought of the irony of the whole thing, but instead had called Abby and invited himself to the Midnight Madness bowling party that she and the nuns always held. Maybe that would be his new tradition, or maybe he'd come up with a brand new one. Because it hadn't been a very pleasant experience realizing just exactly why he held that classic movie so close to his heart.

Anthony DiNozzo wanted to know he mattered, wanted to know he'd made a difference in _somebody's_ life. He identified with George Bailey on a way too visceral level, he knew that now. He didn't have a wife and kids to support and to support him, but he had family on another level that he watched out for, and he hoped, watched out for him. Well, he knew they did. But he wanted them to do it not just because it was their jobs. He wanted them to be glad that he was in their lives, that it made a difference to them that he was, and he wasn't really sure anymore, hadn't been for a long time. Even Gibbs was heavier on the insults and lighter on the affection than he'd ever been. The dynamic had changed, Tony had felt the shift the moment he locked eyes with the exotic woman who so arrogantly had commandeered Cate's desk, and Gibbs had steadily encouraged it.

He hadn't felt like he'd really belonged in that bullpen for a very long time, and the less he felt a part of the team, a part of their lives, the more he identified with George Bailey, lost in an alternative world and searching for what had been lost, or what he never realized had existed. Maybe, unlike George, it never _had_ existed for him, maybe it had always been an illusion, a dream. Just because you believed in something, wanted something really badly, didn't mean it actually existed, or would happen. It only happened in the movies, really. And he knew that's why he kept up the tradition, determined that George Bailey's reality could someday be his, and that it truly was a wonderful life. Wasn't it? He was still waiting to find out...


End file.
